Menopause Night Sweats Can Be Stopped
In order to stop night sweats naturally we should learn about the mechanics of night sweats. There is no reason why you should suffer from night sweats again. Once you understand how night sweats evolve, you will have the knowledge to make them stop.
Our body cools itself by four main methods. The first method is radiation. Radiation is like the heat that you feel while standing in front of an oven that is on. The second method is conduction. Conduction is the heat that you feel if you touch the oven while it is on. The third method is called convection. Convection is heat that is picked-up by the air that passes by the oven while it is on. Simply put it is heat that is conveyed to the air surrounding the hot object. The forth and final method of cooling is evaporation, better known as sweating.
Typically body cooling takes place in that very order. If the body will not cool itself via radiation, conduction, or convection, you will start to sweat. The objective here is to teach you how keep your body cool before we reach the sweating stage. To fully understand how to manage night sweats we will look at each method of cooling your body and evaluate your options.
One thing we should make note of is that normally our body will maintain a relatively constant temperature throughout the night. The problem occurs when our body is not keeping a constant temperature during the day or night. People that suffer from night sweats understand the concept of varying body temperature. Therefore we will look at the cooling cycle with that in mind.
When you get in bed at night you will feel the cool of the sheets and the comfort of the bed. This is a good example of conductive heat transfer. Whenever there is a difference in temperature between the object you are touching and your body, you will feel either a warming sensation or a cooling sensation. Remember that heat travels from hot objects to colder objects. So if you touch ice you feel cold because the heat is leaving your body and going into the ice. If you touch something that is warmer than your body you feel it because heat is moving from the hot object into your body. That is conductive heat transfer.
Now what happens when you are next to an object long enough to equalize the temperatures? Let"s go back to the bed scenario. When you get in bed it feels cool. Right away your bed starts to absorb the heat your body is generating. The problem arises when that material that is absorbing your body heat is no longer able to absorb more heat. At that point your body starts to look for other methods of cooling.
Heat transference by radiation will affect the bed material as well. Radiant energy will be absorbed by the bed material until we reach a point at which the bed can no longer absorb more radiant heat.
Convection, which is the transference of heat by conveying that heat to, in this case air, is only effective when you can generate air movement within that space. Heat will transfer from your body to the air around you and then move off, either by a buoyancy difference or by induced movement. What that means is that when air gets warmer it tends to rise and be replaced by cooler air or if the air is induced to move, like standing in a breezeway or next to a fan, it will move off giving fresh air an opportunity to absorb more heat. Being that we are in a bed, covered with sheets, and the air surrounding us is trapped, the fresh air required for convection to work properly, is not there.
But if that was case wouldn"t everyone sweat in bed? The short answer is no. You see, there is a point where we can reach equilibrium between our bed and our body. This is the point where our bed and our environment are able to absorb enough of our body heat to keep us comfortable. It"s like this. Let"s say your body generates 200 units of heat every minute. Now equilibrium is where the bed is able to absorb and deal with 200 units of heat each minute. At that point you can sleep comfortably. But let"s say your bed is absorbing 250 units of heat every minute, but you are still only generating 200 units of heat each minute, this will be a cold bed. Now if your bed can only absorb 150 units of heat each minute and you are generating 200 units of heat, then you have a hot bed.
That is the exact opposite of what is happening for people that have night sweats. Although we are able to get into bed and it feels nice and cool, that feeling fast evades us. For those of us that have night sweats are dealing with a body that generates heat at varying rates. As with the previous mentioned equalized bed scenario, when you first got into bed your body was generating 200 units of heat each minute. Your bed was absorbing 200 units of heat each minute. You were in equilibrium, all was well. But then you have a "hot flash". Now your body is generating more than 200 units of heat each minute and your bed can"t keep up. If you are generating 250 units of heat each minute and the bed can only deal with 200 units of heat, where will those extra 50 units of heat go? Well they go nowhere. They start to accumulate and buildup between the sheets. This starts a downhill roll right to sweating. Once the extra heat starts to accumulate, and your body starts to get warmer, the only method left for cooling your body is sweating. We don"t want to go there.
Radiation is the first method of cooling yet there is only one method we can use to eliminate or manipulate radiant heat build-up. We will discuss that in a moment.
Conduction is the second method of cooling. The only way to utilize this is to make the bed much cooler. This is the method that doctors are prescribing when they tell you to keep you room cooler. This method increases the amount of heat that your bed is able to absorb or deal with. For several reasons this can be cumbersome, not to mention the cost associated with hyper cooling a room or the effect it has on other members of the house. Remember the bed that absorbs 250 units of heat is a cold bed when you are only generating 200 units of heat.
The third method of keeping you body cool is to utilize convection. Let"s call it moving air. So how do you move air when you are between the sheets? There are several things you can do. One is to kick off the covers and let some cool air in. The other is to raise the sheets and allow some air to flow in. When you lower the sheets the hot air flows out. The final method is to use a fan that can generate a breeze between your sheets
A system like this will generate a light breeze that will travel between your sheets along your body and push the hot air out. This will do several things. First it eliminates the heat that has been building-up between your sheets. So any conductive heat or radiant heat that has built-up between your sheets will be eliminated with the breeze. Second it will keep your bed from accumulating that extra heat when you have a hot flash. Third it will deal with any extra body heat that you generate during the night and quickly move it out from between your sheets. This simple breeze will keep your body from ever reaching the point at which it starts to sweat.
This is the most effective method of dealing with night sweats when you look at it from a thermal dynamics point of view. There are other methods of dealing with the effects of night sweats, like wicking pajamas and absorbent sheets, but that is not dealing with the problem at hand. It is only dealing with the aftermath of the problem. They are only collecting sweat. What we want to do is keep from sweating all together.
Kurt Tompkins is the inventor, developer and manufacture of the Bedfan personal cooling system. A product designed strictly out of necessity and made with simplicity in mind. The Bedfan cooling system can be seen at Source: http://ezinearticles.com/
Ask AP: Maximum heat, oil wells set on fire - The Associated Press
The Associated Press Ask AP: Maximum heat , oil wells set on fire The Associated Press - ... temperatures in the billions of degrees that's billions with a "b" and they can contemplate temperatures that leave that sort of heat in the dust. ...